The chief objective point of modern endeavor has been individual freedom of choice. The _laissez-faire_ doctrine in commercial relations, democracy in politics, the natural philosophy and natural theology of the eighteenth century are all expressions of a belief in equality. When men are made free to choose, they are placed on a basis of equality, since they have a like opportunity to succeed or fail. The man who chooses rightly wins success--the man who chooses wrongly fails.
Thus the freedom to choose is for the average man a right of inestimable value, because it places in his hands the opportunity to achieve. Rights do not, however, come alone. The freeman is bound in his choices to recognize the law that rights are always accompanied by duties.
Each right is accompanied by a proportionate responsibility--there is no dinner without its dishwashing. To be sure, you may shift the burden of dishwashing to the maid, and the burden of voting to the "other fellow," but the responsibility is none the less present. Garbage is still garbage, even when thrown into the well, and your responsibilities, shifted to the maid and the other voter, return to plague you in the form of a servant problem and of vicious politics. Men who have a right to choose have also a duty to fulfill, and this right and this duty are inseparable.
The eighteenth century began the discovery of the individual man; the nineteenth century--at least the latter half of it--was responsible for the discovery of the individual woman. Even to-day in many civilized lands, the woman is merely an appendage. Men innumerable write in the hotel register "John Edwards and Wife," yet if the truth were told they should often write "Jane Edwards and John Edwards," and perhaps sometimes "Jane Edwards and husband."
Western civilization, a good unthinking creature, has insisted bravely on the development of the individual man, while largely overlooking the existence of the individual woman; yet the studies of heredity show very clearly that at least as many qualities are inherited from the female as from the male. Nay, further, since the female is less specialized, the distinctive race qualities are inherited from her, rather than from the more specialized male. In short, the Super Man will have a mother as well as a father.